My Foray into My Midwestern Roots

Why I’d Like to Meet Maureen Taylor

Just hearing her name causes some in the genealogy, photography and history circles to say “oooh!” Maureen Taylor, aka the Photo Detective, has appeared on The Today Show and RootsTV. She’s a photo curator and an expert in photo preservation and identification.

How many of us “regular” folks have come across a photographic mystery while exploring attics, basements, and other areas our family has kept photos?

While I was in Ohio, I came across a group of photographs that can only be described as big. These are remarkable enlargements for the time. One is poster size and is a photo of my grandfather and his family. I’m interested to find out if this enlargement was made in more recent history as my grandfather looked to be about 10 – making the date of the photo about 1908. Included in this stack were photos that actually looked more like charcoal drawings. Are these really originals or photos of drawings? They are on thick stock.

Needless to say, these photographs are much too large for me to scan. I will have to actually take a digital photo of them in order to post them. For the age of these pictures – they are in pretty good shape.

I’d love to pull out these pictures and see Maureen’s expression. Would she be as excited as I was to see them? What type of storage should I place these precious heirlooms in so that they will survive? What can she tell me about the history of these enlargements?

I guess for now I’ll have to keep reading the Photo Detective Blog, her articles in genealogy magazines, her books, and wondering if someday I’ll be as lucky as some of my geneablogger friends who actually got to meet and talk with her at the Southern California Jamboree!